Monthly Archives: June 2016

I've been featuring excerpts here from L.A. Now and Then, a fine musical revue about Los Angeles that played a brief run in that very city a few weeks ago. It was assembled by Bruce Kimmel, who I believe also wrote this number, which was the Act One closer — a salute to the televised wrestling matches that were once a staple of local TV.

I wrote about the show here. It's reportedly going to return soon in some form but in the meantime, you can buy a copy of the cast album here. And now, let's go to the mat…

My friend Paul Dini will be discussing and signing his new graphic novel, Dark Night: A True Batman Story this evening at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena. The discussion part will consist of me ruthlessly interrogating him…and I'd say I will leave him bruised and battered but as you'll see when you read this amazing book, someone already did that. For real.

It starts at 7 PM but if I were you, I'd get there early. Of course, if you were me, you wouldn't have to because I'm the host and they can't make me wait in line. I hope.

Jonathan Chait — him again — rebuts Ralph Nader's dogged insistence that he bears no responsibility whatsoever for George W. Bush's 2000 victory over Al Gore — and by extension, all the bad things that happened to this country because of the Bush presidency, or at least the first term of it.

Obviously, there were other factors in play besides Nader, starting with the fact that Gore wasn't the greatest of candidates and that the Bush folks ran a much better campaign. It also didn't help that so much of the press obviously didn't think much of Gore and the narrative developed that he was a stiff, cold, policy wonk of a man who lied a lot, like when he said he'd invented the Internet, which of course he didn't say.

Prior to that election, I had great respect for Nader. He was that rarity: A non-elected person who made a real difference in Washington. His drive to become an elected person though turned him into — or maybe revealed him to always have been — not all that different. He was mounting what could have been a real, honest-to-God, could-really-change-things Third Party candidacy but really, it turned out to be founded on only one principle: That Ralph Nader should be President because he was Ralph Nader. It wasn't about anyone else or anything else, just as Ross Perot's Third Party candidacy was only about Ross Perot. Neither man passed on any flag to anyone to carry on their work and build on what they'd done.

There's much to be said for getting a Third Party up and running…and not just that it might someday be an actual player. If it were about something more than one guy's ego-driven yearning to be the President of the United States, it might demonstrate that there's a substantial, growing group o' folks out there who share certain viewpoints. But in neither case — Nader or Perot — were you investing in a long-range plan built on political philosophy if you supported and voted for those men. You were just supporting them and nothing larger.

I mention this because Bernie Sanders is probably too old to run for the presidency again. I really, really hope we don't look back some day and see that whatever movement and excitement he fomented ended once he was no longer running.

Leonard Maltin writes of Janet Waldo and offers up a great interview with this lovely lady. Did I make it clear in my obit for her that she really was as sweet as her voice would suggest?

If you live anywhere near Los Angeles, you have a chance this Saturday night to see the best damned improv comedy troupe I've ever seen. Every so often — and this is the last time until September — they get together and put on an Instaplay, which is their name for an entire musical comedy created on the spot, based on a suggestion from someone in the audience — maybe even you! Yes, they have a live audience — unlike some one-performance musical comedies we could mention! They are also funny and brilliant.

It's Saturday night at the Fanatic Salon Theater in Culver City and tickets are only $11.00. The director is Bill Steinkellner. The cast is George McGrath, Deanna Oliver, Jonathan Stark, Cheri Steinkellner and Navaris Darson with John Boswell at the keyboard. The theater is small and intimate (and about as non-fancy as any place you'll ever see brilliant comedy) but tickets are a lot easier and cheaper to get than Hamilton, and the show will probably be a lot funnier. Here's the link you want to click on. I shall be present.

Since you have nothing better to do for the next two hours and 48 minutes, I'm sure you're going to watch all twelve chapters of Zombies of the Stratosphere, a 1952 Republic movie serial about Martians with a fiendish plan. They want to use a hydrogen bomb to knock Earth out of its orbit so Mars can be the third closest planet to the sun. Hey, laugh if you want but there's at least as much a chance of that as there is of Donald Trump building his wall and forcing Mexico to pay for it.

As serials go, this one's unusually tedious at times. Judd Holdren, who did a lot of things like this, plays the hero…but his best moments are doubled by Dale Van Sickel, a "star" stuntman whose stunting career started in the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup in 1933 and ended in a crash while he was stunt-driving for the 1976 Disney movie, No Deposit, No Return. The only actor you may recognize in this serial is Leonard Nimoy, who plays one of the scheming Martians. Whatever happened to that guy?

Friend-of-this-site Jim Winstead has tracked down a couple of the artists responsible for the Hanna-Barbera graffiti in the alley I mentioned in the previous post. The Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy display is the work on an artist who calls himself Self Uno and that's a link to his website. And the Underdog piece appear to be by this guy.

Last week, I was up in the Hollywood area and I happened across something. At the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Kenmore, there's a Burger King. Behind the Burger King, there's an alley where someone — I have no idea who or why — has painted some walls with graffiti of (mostly) Hanna-Barbera characters. It appears to be the work of several artists and while most of them signed their work, I couldn't make out any names. Some of the drawings are pretty good.

This was apparently done in the last year. I did a Google Maps search for the alley and found an image from June of 2015 that has all different imagery on the walls. Here it is. (If you're reading this post after June of 2016, that photo may have changed.)

Here are four photos I took. As you can see, they show Huckleberry Hound, Pebbles and Bamm Bamm, the cast of Jonny Quest, Wally Gator and — for some reason — Underdog, who was not a Hanna-Barbera character. There were other H-B stars there too, though no Top Cat. Since Top Cat lived in an alley, he would have been my first thought.

I'm curious about who did these and why. It did not appear to be unauthorized graffiti. The folks who did all this were probably out there for several days and they were painting over other paintings. The location is a few blocks from the non-profit Children's Hospital Los Angeles but it's not close enough that I can imagine any connection.

If anyone has any knowledge of whodunnit, lemme know. In the meantime, take a look at these pics. You can make them larger by clicking on them…

The magic on the Internet: Eleven different people get together to sing a song. The lead singer is Sonny Vande Putte who's in Belgium and he's backed by singers in the U.K., Italy, Germany, Indonesia and the U.S. of A…

I posted this last week and didn't get much response, which is odd for this blog. So, one more time…

Hey, I've been playing around with the GoPro Hero4 Silver video camera — one of these. It's a great little camera but I'd like to minimize the "fisheye" look it gives to people when you shoot them close up…like in the same zip code.

I find conflicting advice on the Internet. Does anyone reading this know the camera well enough to advise me? I know there are programs for the MAC that can correct the imagery but I'm a Windows kinda guy.

…athough come to think of it, I never told you I was gone. Monday, the 104° temperatures in my part of Los Angeles weren't quite bad enough so I jumped on a Southwest flight to Las Vegas, where it was 115°. Five degrees hotter than that and you would have seen half the showgirls' chests there melt.

…although come to think of it, I don't think there are any more showgirls in Las Vegas; not since Jubilee! closed at Bally's. Never mind that. Actually, I went there for the Licensing Show, an annual event where licensors (folks with characters or properties or even well-known trademarks) interface with licensees (folks who pay money to put those characters, properties and trademarks onto merchandise.) I am neither licensor nor licensee but I had business-type meetings with a couple of each so I Southwested there Monday afternoon.

The above photo is not from this trip. I didn't take any photos this time and in fact, didn't even see a walkaround Cookie Monster costume. It's from the last time I attended the Licensing Show, which was in 2011. When I reported on it back then, I promised you a photo of "me posing with one of my favorite TV stars." So that's it. But I'm getting ahead of my story.

I didn't experience one of those longer-than-your-flight TSA lines we hear so much about lately; not at either airport. I did though at LAX encounter a TSA employee who apparently had never dealt with a passenger whose replacement knee set off the metal detector. That took a while.

The flights both ways were crammed full, as all Southwest flights tend to be. On the way there, I was crammed next to a man who was unable to stop talking loudly about how the United States is doomed unless we elect Donald Trump. I was under no delusion this fellow's mind could be changed but just to amuse those around us, I had a go at it. I'll discuss our exchange in a future post here but I'll give you a little preview…

I asked him a few questions about how Trump would fix some of the alleged disasters about which he rants. My fellow passenger's reply was always along the lines of "He'll bring in the best experts!"

ME: In other words, he has no plan at all. He'll just find someone who does. That's real leadership. Bozo the Clown could do that.

HIM: Bozo the Clown is not a successful businessman. He doesn't have his name on dozens of buildings!

ME: No, but Ronald McDonald has his on thousands. Hey, maybe if you vote for him, you'll get fries with it.

We did about 600 air miles like that. It ended when we hit the turbulence that results when you fly over desert when it's eighty quadrillion million degrees on the ground.

How did I cope with the Vegas heat? By not going out into it. The convention, which is still going on as we speak. is at Mandalay Bay. I was staying in the Excalibur, which connects to the Luxor which connects to Mandalay Bay. It's a helluva long walk, especially for a guy with a new knee but I didn't have to venture outside at all except going to and from cabs. If you add it all up, I was outside the jurisdiction of air conditioning for about 90 seconds.

That was one reason I stayed at the Excalibur. Another was that since I was traveling alone, I didn't need luxury. I needed a bed, a desk on which to write, a sink, a toilet and a shower. At the Excalibur, the cheapest rooms have all that and the shower is an actual shower, not a shower-tub combo. I could have spared myself a lot of hiking if I'd stayed at Mandalay Bay or the Luxor but at the Luxor, some rooms don't have desks and at both hotels, most lower-priced rooms have shower-tub combos. Shower-tub combos are something I avoid when possible. I suppose they're manageable if you're shorter and narrower than I am and have a better sense of balance.

The Licensing Show is huge and vast and it involves a side of show business that most folks rarely see. There, people speak a language I do not understand…one of marketing and demographics and penetration into certain areas that I've never longed to penetrate. But there's also creative stuff. And celebrity appearances. And people in big, goofy walkaround costumes playing characters who are available for licensing. It feels a teensy bit like Comic-Con…enough that I kept feeling I should be upstairs somewhere moderating eleven panels.

I was going to stay through today but I completed all my planned meetings Tuesday morning and was getting weary from all the walking, plus experiencing a bit of back trouble. The bed in my hotel room was hard enough that I think the Excalibur previously used it as a drawbridge, plus — and this is going to seem silly in a town the size of Las Vegas — I was having trouble finding a place to sit down. The chairs in my room and the bed were all built low to the ground, which is not good for my new knee. As I passed through the three hotel-casinos, every bench I passed, every resting spot around the convention…they were all too low for me.

So I spent Monday staggering around, looking with little success for someplace to sit that was good for my knee. At one point at the Licensing Show, a lady representing a Korean animation firm asked if she could tell me all about their operation. I really had no interest in what she was selling but my legs were fatigued and begging for relief just then and I noticed their booth had high stools. So I said to her, "I'd love to hear all about it if I can do it sitting on one of those." Anything for a comfy chair.

Later in the non-convention part of Mandalay Bay, I spotted not a bench but a fountain with a proper-height wall around it and I just parked myself on that wall for a half-hour, hauled out my iPad and read Kindle books. It may have been the high point of my trip and it felt so good that while there, I also used the iPad to move my return flight from Wednesday afternoon to Tuesday evening.

Some people love to gamble in Vegas. Some people love to dine or see shows. My big thrill there this trip was sitting on the edge of a fountain.

Let's see what else I saw while in Vegas. I watched but did not put any money into an elaborate Flintstones slot machine…or any other such devices. There were also new slots of Batman (decorated with pics of Adam West, Burt Ward and other cast members) and Wonder Woman (with Lynda Carter). The Flintstones one got me wondering: Does Nevada still have that law against making gaming devices look attractive to children or has everyone just decided to ignore it?

I played no Blackjack, either. Years ago, it was my game of choice and I got to be really good at it. Then one day, when I was "ahead" collectively for all the Blackjack I'd played in my life, I decided it might be nice to remain "ahead" forever. I quit Cold Turkey and haven't wagered a buck on the game since, though I used to stop and watch others have at it and "play along" in my head. This time, I didn't even do that.

Mandalay Bay is connected to the Luxor by a mall with about forty stores in it and I had to walk through it several times. In it is a collectibles shop and apparently most days, they have Pete Rose there signing autographs for some fee. I didn't find out what it is because though I felt sorry for the man, I had no intention of paying it.

Why did I feel sorry? Well, remember the scene in This is Spinal Tap where the band sits sadly in a record store when no one shows up to get their signatures? The scene in the mall store looked a lot like that, with a guy out front practically begging passers-by to come in and get a ball signed by a living legend of sports. My last time past, Mr. Rose seemed to be writing his name on a jersey for some fan so I felt better about the whole thing. If you ever become a truly great baseball player, try to not get caught betting on games.

I dined Monday evening at the Excalibur Buffet, which really isn't cost-efficient for a guy like me who's had Gastric Bypass Surgery. Even if I wanted to, I physically could not eat enough food to justify paying $24 a plate. But I needed grub just then, the convenient alternatives to paying that much were Pizza Hut and Popeye's fried chicken…and I knew the Excalibur Buffet had really, really good carved roast turkey, which is my favorite entree. So I went in, paid the $24 and just to amuse the cashier, told her to close the place down because since I was there, there'd be insufficient food left for any who came after me. She laughed.

I had my one plate of two slices of turkey, some whipped potatoes and gravy, a bit of stuffing and I also grabbed a piece of BBQ chicken, some glazed carrots and a few meatballs. No beverage, no dessert. I've given up all foods high in sugar and all drinks that are not water. It was a plate o' chow that in a sit-down restaurant, you might pay ten bucks for, twelve tops, but it was pretty good.

It took me about ten minutes to consume it and as I got up to leave, the cashier lady was circulating, playing hostess. She saw me and asked, "Going back for seconds?" I told her no, I was done. She said, "You mean I closed this place just so you could eat two damn pieces of turkey?"

I very much admire Lewis Black but I feel he's a bit off-base here when he discusses "Political Correctness," which strikes me as a term that everyone is using with their own, self-serving definition. What one guy is ranting about when he speaks of P.C. is not what some other guy is ranting about…though under most definitions lately, opposing P.C. has become an all-purpose excuse for a lot of bad behavior.

See, the way I view it is that a comedian — or actually anyone who can get a public forum — has the right to say whatever they want. And the audience has every right to not laugh or not agree or to think that what the person said was bigoted or just plain stupid. Free Speech is not just for the person with the microphone. Lately, a lot of comedians are complaining that the audience didn't laugh or the college didn't book him because he wasn't "politically correct."

Well, maybe…or maybe his act was just lousy.

Or in the wrong place. That's another thing to consider here. If you get up before a room of older people with strong evangelical convictions and start telling dick jokes and doing Bill Maher's anti-religion act, I don't think it's fair to blame the audience if they aren't amused or accepting. You don't have a constitutional right to be appreciated everywhere you go. (A comedian friend of mine thinks that when comics complain that colleges these days are too "P.C." to hire them, what some of them are really complaining about is that colleges aren't willing to pay established headliner rates to which the comedian feels entitled.)

In the video below, Lewis Black complains that audiences freeze up and don't listen the minute he mentions "guns" before they even know what he's going to say about them. That might be the kind of Political Correctness he decries but it also might be a reaction to him introducing a topic that usually seems to go nowhere. I've seen a lot of comics discuss guns and the only one I can think of who hasn't been preachy, pedantic or unfunny on the subject is Jim Jefferies.

Black does not say people reacted badly to whatever he had to say about guns; just that the topic brought a chill to the proceedings. I don't see why that's bad. It's not wrong for a comic to take the thing you might prefer not to hear about and have a new, fresh perspective on it that will make them glad you brought it up. George Carlin did that all the time. He liked venturing into those topics.

Some Trump backers speak of "The Tyranny of Political Correctness" and what I usually think they really mean is "The Tyranny of People Not Liking What I'm Saying." It's like they should be free to make racist comments without someone accusing them of racism. After all, racism is not Politically Correct and Political Correctness is bad, in and of itself, right?

I keep hearing people say we should applaud Trump for speaking his mind. I actually don't think Trump is speaking his mind. I think he's saying whatever he thinks his base wants to hear, regardless of the facts of the matter or what he would actually do were he to be elected. But even if what he says is from the heart, so is the opposition to it. He has the right to say it. We have the right to boo it. That's how it works. Here's Lewis Black…

Here are two lists. One is of shows that are scheduled to open on Broadway shortly. The other list is of shows that are trying to arrange to open on Broadway in the near future. About 75% of the shows on the second list will probably make it.

There are a number of great movie musicals being adapted for the stage and it's looking like an especially good year for Irving Berlin with a scheduled opening for Holiday Inn and a likely production of Top Hat. Meanwhile, the non-Berlin Singin' in the Rain, which was already turned into a stage musical is being turned into one again. You also have a lot of non-musical movies being turned into stage musicals including Anastasia, Amelie, 17 Again, Mean Girls, Bull Durham, Diner, Magic Mike and King Kong. A musical based on King Kong? Well, why the hell not?

There are also movies being turned into non-musical plays, like To Kill a Mockingbird, Shakespeare in Love and Rear Window.

For younger audiences, there's a SpongeBob SquarePants musical and Disney is adding more songs to Frozen and putting it on stage. Oh — and the West End musical adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (based on the book, not on the Willy Wonka movie) opens next March.

But you notice what movie-turned-into-a-musical isn't on the list? The Jerry Lewis version of The Nutty Professor. Heck, it's been more than a year since Jerry announced its last absolutely, definite opening date on Broadway. I have this odd hunch that the problem isn't that there's no market for it or that no one wants to back it. My hunch is that its producers are waiting for Jerry (age 90) to either leave us or give up on the idea that he can be involved and approve everything.

There's a lot of anger out there at the Senators who yesterday voted down four pretty minor Gun Control bills. I suppose a good case could be made that in this instance, nothing is better than something; that if they had passed one of them, it would have resulted in no law more substantial making it through in our lifetimes. It would be like, "Okay, you got your Gun Control so shut up," and then — after the next mass shooting — it would be, "See? There's incontrovertible proof that Gun Control doesn't work."

The working premise of its opponents has always been that if it isn't 100% effective, it's 0% effective. I'm surprised they don't want to get rid of all laws designed to stop murder, rape and assault because, you know, there are still murders, rapes and assaults.

And I wonder if some of the anger isn't misdirected. Yeah, the Senators who vote with the N.R.A. have generally taken loads of moola from them but the more important "bribe" is probably that the N.R.A. hasn't recruited opponents to take them out. Yeah, polls show that overwhelming numbers of us, a majority of gun owners included, want stricter controls in this area…but we're not going to get what we want until it's possible to point to a number of ousted Congressfolks and say, "S/He lost her/his seat because s/he opposed Gun Control!" That ain't happened yet.

In Trump News, Kevin Drum and Jonathan Chait both note that the man running as the Supreme Financial Manager seems to be outta cash and way behind Hillary Clinton in fundraising. How embarrassing is that?

Chait and Ed Kilgore here debate whether the Republicans will or should find some way to dump The Donald and slide someone else in as the nominee. Kilgore says they shouldn't and they won't…and all his arguments make total sense to me. Then again, very little about this election has followed the guidelines of total sense.

The main argument that Trump won't be displaced seems to me to be that there's no one else with enough importance and charisma to fill the role of super-hero saving the Republican Party. If they ran someone like Jeb Bush or even Ted Cruz — someone Trump trumped in the primary — it would really reek of ignoring the will of the electorate and infuriate many. But who else is there? Romney? Scott Walker? And it's hard to imagine Trump bowing out gracefully. Heck, it's hard to imagine Trump canceling a dinner reservation gracefully.

Kevin Drum has an incomplete list of times when Donald Trump has "walked back" some comment or promise. That means he said it one day, everyone thought it was stupid and so the next day, he went out and pretended he said something else the day before…and anyone who says he didn't is lying or they misunderstood.

Hard to believe there are folks in this world who like this man because he's outspoken and he speaks his mind and he really means what he says. Well, he does for 24 hours,